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LONDON, England -- Finance ministers from the world's wealthiest nations have agreed to a historic accord to cancel up to $55 billion worth of debt owed by the world's poorest nations.

The Group of Eight (G8) ministers -- meeting for a second day Saturday in London -- backed a deal that calls for an immediate scrapping of 100 percent of the debt owed by 18 countries.

Those countries -- many in sub-Saharan Africa -- owe about $40 billion to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank.

The G8 ministers also said 20 other countries could be eligible for debt relief if they meet targets for good governance and tackling corruption -- bringing the total package to more than $55 billion.

British Finance Minister Gordon Brown called the accord a "new deal" for relations between the rich and the poor countries.

"What we have decided today, conscious of the poverty that we face, is a decision of 100 percent debt cancellation for the poorest countries backed up by greater trade justice, by a doubling of European aid, by a commitment to provide AIDS treatments for people by 2010," said Brown.

Finance ministers from the United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, Russia, Germany, Italy and France agreed to the package ahead of a G8 summit July 6-8 in Gleneagles, Scotland. (Special report).

Hopes of an accord on debt relief were raised Friday with reports of an agreement between the United States and Britain on writing off debt owed by the 18 countries. (Full story)

Sub-Saharan Africa owe about $68 billion to international lending agencies.

Saturday's accord is aimed at helping countries free up funds used for debt repayment in redirect the money to health care, education and other needs. One of the major issues that these countries face is the AIDS crisis.

"A real milestone has been reached," U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow told reporters.

"Lifting the debt burden from the poorest countries in the world brightens their prospects enormously. This is an achievement of historic proportions."

He also said "we did that because as we looked at the situation, there was something fundamentally wrong about this cycle of lend and forgive, lend and forgive, which had borne down upon the poorest countries for decades."

The agreement was greeted with less enthusiasm by some.

Stephen Rand, of the Make Poverty History campaign, said this is "good news, but more needs to be done."

"This is some of the debts of some of the world's poorest countries. And we have been campaigning for that 100 percent to be 100 percent of all the debts of all the world's poorest countries," Rand said.

Make Poverty History is a coalition dedicated to the eradication of poverty

British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- current G8 president -- had demanded that poor countries' debts be cancelled and their aid doubled.

The debts would be written off by the lenders in an effort to allow the debtor countries to start fresh, get their books in order and eventually be able to borrow again for economic development, health, education and social programs, rather than simply to repay existing loans.

The G8 ministers discussed other issues Saturday, including concerns about the effect of high oil prices on the global economy, U.S. deficits, reform of Japan's financial sector and poor economic growth in European.

Chinese officials have been included in order for U.S. and European ministers to urge them to the float the yuan, which many see as being overvalued, leading to floods of cheap imports.

This is some of the best news I've heard in.... well, maybe my entire life.
I've always thought Blair was a good politician, just hanging out with the wrong crowd (Bush)... After all he managed to stay in office following recent elections (though his party had major losses). This may be his way of reestablishing some credibility with the world because he has been pushing for this hard.

Blair is a shithead who supports taking away liberties and rights of citizens in the name of national security. Quoted in this season's 2600 magazine: "Those considerations of national security have to come before civil liberties, however important they are". Obviously, he's better then the extremist party over in England, but he's still a shit.

Also, erasing debt for 3rd world countries is a good thing. It's not like it would ever get paid back anyways.

I always thought blair was a cocksucker and to be honest, i still do.
Still, while he's trying to save face as a humanitar european former peace nobel prize candidate he might get Africa out of debt, i got nothing but love for that in all honesty.

True, the money most likely would never be paid back. But guess what? It's not like the people that loaned them the money have ANY INTENTION WHATSOEVER of taking a loss on it. Oh no. What will happen is that they will MONETIZE THE DEBT, and YOU AND ME will be paying the sonsofbitches their money back. WITH INTEREST, you can be sure.

I do not believe that those bastards at the IMF and World Bank ever intended to collect the debt. Their intention from the very first was to let the sub-Saharan African nations default, and then magnanimously "forgive" the debt (oh, how compassionate!) and then seek to be re-imbursed by the mean old wealthy G8 nations, uh, change that to read "THE PEOPLE OF" the G8 nations.

They are not doing the people of sub-Saharan Africa any favors by loaning them money that they cannot ever hope to repay. All it does is inflate the shit out of the local economy and FURTHER consolidate wealth into the hands of the ruling oligarchies there.

To help sub-Saharan Africa, we must INVEST IN BUSINESS THERE AND EMPLOY THEM. The businesses will then pay taxes to the governments, which will then build schools, police forces, health facilities, establish banks and public utilities, which will allow the local people to become a middle class, accumulate wealth, and build universities, which will in turn create the next generation of professionals.

If you just give them the money, they spend it, and then they are broke again.

If the world's most economical small truck was produced in Chad, instead of Japan, do you think that suddenly people would stop buying Toyotas? Of course not. But as long as Chad has no schools, no decent government, no professional class, no universities, few natural resources, no ports, no rail transport, no decent highways and an uneducated work force, Toyotas will be produced in countries that have all those things. The people of sub-Saharan Africa are living somewhere that nobody should be living in large numbers. They should immigrate. The fact that they are desperately poor and starving is sort of Nature's way of saying "MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE, THERE'S NO FOOD OR WATER HERE."

Come on, fermentor666, have you ever seen a picture of Chad? There ain't shit there but goats and sun-scorched sand. Things are so bad there that the French Foreign Legion brings it's own whores (sanitaires) and that's really saying something.

Sub-Saharan Africa has got to be one of the worst places on earth where people actually still live. I definately would not loan them any money unless I wanted the interest paid in goats.

Originally posted by KaBar2@Jun 12 2005, 05:08 PMTrue, the money most likely would never be paid back. But guess what? It's not like the people that loaned them the money have ANY INTENTION WHATSOEVER of taking a loss on it. Oh no. What will happen is that they will MONETIZE THE DEBT, and YOU AND ME will be paying the sonsofbitches their money back. WITH INTEREST, you can be sure.

I do not believe that those bastards at the IMF and World Bank ever intended to collect the debt. Their intention from the very first was to let the sub-Saharan African nations default, and then magnanimously "forgive" the debt (oh, how compassionate!) and then seek to be re-imbursed by the mean old wealthy G8 nations, uh, change that to read "THE PEOPLE OF" the G8 nations.

They are not doing the people of sub-Saharan Africa any favors by loaning them money that they cannot ever hope to repay. All it does is inflate the shit out of the local economy and FURTHER consolidate wealth into the hands of the ruling oligarchies there.

To help sub-Saharan Africa, we must INVEST IN BUSINESS THERE AND EMPLOY THEM. The businesses will then pay taxes to the governments, which will then build schools, police forces, health facilities, establish banks and public utilities, which will allow the local people to become a middle class, accumulate wealth, and build universities, which will in turn create the next generation of professionals.

If you just give them the money, they spend it, and then they are broke again.

If the world's most economical small truck was produced in Chad, instead of Japan, do you think that suddenly people would stop buying Toyotas? Of course not. But as long as Chad has no schools, no decent government, no professional class, no universities, few natural resources, no ports, no rail transport, no decent highways and an uneducated work force, Toyotas will be produced in countries that have all those things. The people of sub-Saharan Africa are living somewhere that nobody should be living in large numbers. They should immigrate. The fact that they are desperately poor and starving is sort of Nature's way of saying "MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE, THERE'S NO FOOD OR WATER HERE."

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Kabar

A lot of what you said is definitely true, and I agree with almost all of it. The IMF and the World Bank are tools of the elite and have been fucking over whole regions with that bogus loan shit for a minute. Though I do believe that, in theory, the money loaned to those regions are a good thing and probably essential for them to participate in the world economy, but in reality the shit is misappropiated by corrupt ruling classes of those countries and sqaundered shit is fucked, I just wish someone gave a damn to actually institute programs there that could actually help the people and exploit the land and resources in a way that could actually be beneficial to those people..Chad for instance, while the northern parts of the country are arid and desert like the southern half is tropical in climate. Irrigiation and agiculture programs should be insitituted there and the people could actually be taught how to make the desert bloom, solving a lot of other problems (land issues, famine) in the process..I just wonder if this will ever happen..Rich people haven't given a shit about Africa since the colonial era..

Originally posted by dumy@Jun 15 2005, 11:29 PMThough I do believe that, in theory, the money loaned to those regions are a good thing and probably essential for them to participate in the world economy, but in reality the shit is misappropiated by corrupt ruling classes of those countries and sqaundered shit is fucked,

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To my understanding it's misappropriated by the IMF and World Bank first...as in they force the ruling class of these countries to use the loans on specific industries, they also sometimes force them to hire american corporations to do the work. Often times these american companies will then over-estimate needed infrastructure and build useless roads, factories, power plants...but never schools, hospitals, soup kitchens. So the money is loaned for the purpose of hiring american companies to establish industries which only benfit the american economy, and it's all done under the guise of humanitarian and economic aid for impoverished areas. And of course the ruling class of that country gets a hefty cut and goes along with it. There was a great article posted in here a few months ago about this called confessions of an economic hitman.

sure eliminateion of third world debt is a good thing, but i saw something ont he news about it a few weeks ago, bush and blair saying that "there were strings attached", namely these countries would have to "make positive steps towards democracy". does this spell puppet government to anyone else? where presidential candidates are selected by the US and britain? sorry im just incredibly sceptical of any plan hatched by bush and blair...